Thursday, July 21, 2005

Back from Morocco; Family; Conference

I'm back from Morocco now, and had a nice interesting time. My presentation on Sudan went very well, and I had some critical but constructive feedback from an outstanding scholar, Ahmed Ibrahim Abushouk of the International Islamic University, Malaysia. I met and spoke with scholars and teachers from places like Turkey, Australia, Brazil, Pakistan, and India. The day after the conference a group of attendees visited the ancient trading city of Fez, built in the ninth century. I have a slide presentation with all sorts of fascinating pictures, but I'm going to post it soon along with an essay I'm writing about the trip.

In other news, I finished teaching my summer school course last week and am enjoying my summer vacation with the wife and kids. It is nice to just hang out for at least a few weeks. Jenni and I find out what we are having (our 3rd child is due in December) in two short weeks.

This brief respite from teaching has also afforded me the time to catch up on some overdue book reviews for various journals, continue reading for my independent readings course on Central Africa, and work on several conference papers. I found out recently that two proposals of mine were accepted for the After Evangelicalism? conference in Grand Rapids, September 15-17. I've organized a panel (or, rather, several panels) on the Emerging Church with several fellow grad students, a theologian, and one practitioner. It should be an interesting conference.